


Caldera

by Esmenet



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmenet/pseuds/Esmenet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dealing with Zuzu's doctors is an exercise in frustration. As is everything else these days. (Azula in the 'asylum'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caldera

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot that I wrote an Azula-in-the-asylum fic! Originally intended as part of an exchange, but the moderators passed over it for whatever reason, so I'm posting it now. 100% incompatible with _The Promise_.

_It appears that the Fire Lord's younger sister has suffered these uncontrollable fits of rage from a very early age. Most notable is the incident wherein at the age of ten she received an expensive gift from General Iroh and immediately burnt it to ashes for no apparent reason._

-

Dealing with Zuzu's doctors is an exercise in frustration. ( _Frustration_ —the word—has been greatly irritating lately. It feels itchy.) They keep trying to catch her off-balance by varying their questions very slightly. Once she would have enjoyed giving them nothing at all, or perhaps hints of the wrong things, but lately it's just tiresome. Everything about this is tiresome.

Today there is a new doctor, not much older than Azula herself. "You must be Princess Azula," she says.

Must she, now.

-

Song— _her name is Song, don't forget, she'll tell someone if you forget_ mdash;asks the same questions every time and then talks for half an hour about nothing. Azula doesn't listen; it's pointless. (The words get under her skin sometimes anyway, hanging around in her head for hours at a time and trying to pretend they have actual _meaning_ instead of giving in and becoming the cloud of vacant niceness they are clearly intended to be.)

She hates Song—or she would, if she could focus enough to sustain hate. That hot, clear-cut feeling, like embers of a banked fire.

-

(There was always something wrong with Azula. It wasn't obvious when she was young, but even before she could talk Ursa would sometimes catch a hint of strangeness. Something in the lilt of her cries, the movement of her face, just a little bit off. As she grew older, it only got worse; a strange disconnect between others' actions and her response, a lightning-fast temper, something not quite right.

Is it wrong, to love a monster?)

-

"Tell my brother I don't want to talk to him," Azula says matter-of-factly.

Song makes that face again, the one where it looks like her eyes are trying to grow bigger than her head and she starts to remind Azula of some sort of baby animal. Or Ty Lee (she cuts her thought process off there, sharply, because she hasn't seen Ty Lee since that day at the Boiling Rock). "He hasn't seen you in six months, he's worried about you. Besides," she says, dropping the act, "two things: one, if he says he's coming to see you I can't stop him, and two, I want him to owe me even more than he already does."

Azula can respect that, she supposes, even if she disapproves of blatant honesty on principle.

They arrange the visit for a time when Azula's asleep, which is ridiculous—why are they even bothering?—but probably Song's idea of helping her. A pity. She was almost looking forward to a good talk with Zuzu; any chance to mess with his head is a good one.

It's nice that Song is trying, though. —that's the word, isn't it? 'Nice'?

-

She has to wear her hair down all the time now, because otherwise she starts to catch her mother's reflections in the corners of things. Song brushes it for her, and says nothing at all.

On one of the days when Song is elsewhere and a different doctor comes in for a few minutes to try and catch her being insane (she is always mad, she has always been mad, things are different now but it has nothing to do with these pointless questions) she puts her hair up (badly) and listens to Ursa talk.

"I'm sorry."

"I didn't want to leave you."

"I love you."

_Why does it have to be all about you,_ Azula wonders.

-

"There's been news of your mother."

Song must be expecting her to drop the teacup, so Azula sips from it carefully and uses the time to leash the feeling of sudden, sickening movement. The echo of shattered clay. "Do tell."

"There have been rumours of a retired female general living in the north that match with certain reports from the time your mother fled. Your brother" —she always says 'your brother', never 'the Fire Lord'— "and Mai are organizing a search. That's all I know so far."

Anger bubbles up like lava, slow and hot, but her breath stays cold as ever.

-

For a time Azula was sure the waterbenders had frozen everything warm from her. Even the warm glow of rage was gone, replaced with dull resentment, and her razor-sharp words had gone slow and sluggish. It was . . . disappointing. Insanity would be less pointless, surely?

Eventually, she got used to being tired all the time.

She has learned to act as though she is made of ice, but slowly heat has been growing underneath. She can feel it now, like a tiny flame inside her heart.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Caldera](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1335994) by [Chestnut_filly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_filly/pseuds/Chestnut_filly)




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